Pay Online on an invoice — or Pay Now in the list — opens the pay dialog.
- The invoice and Total are listed at the top.
-
Payment Amount depends on your Support Partial Payments setting (Section 6.3):
- On — the amount is editable. A client can pay less than the total (a partial payment) or more (the extra is applied as a credit on the newest invoice in the payment).
- Off — the amount is fixed at the total due.
- Payment Method offers Card and US Bank Account, depending on which rails you accept.
- Select Card picks from their saved methods, with the Primary one preselected.
- Enable auto-pay and use this card for future invoices lets them opt into Auto Pay while paying.
- Request Notes passes a message to your office.
- Make Payment $nn.nn completes it.
Once it goes through, the invoice is stamped PAID, the balance drops to $0.00, and the payment appears in Payments.
Note: Whether clients can enrol in Auto Pay at all is your choice — Allow clients to set up Autopay on the General tab. Turning it off stops new signups but lets anyone already enrolled opt out.
Note: Some cards ask the cardholder’s bank to verify the payment. When that happens the client gets an extra step from their bank inside the dialog before the payment completes. Nothing is charged until they finish it.
Note: A payment by US Bank Account is not instant. The dialog says so — “Bank transfers settle in 2–4 business days. The invoice stays open until the funds clear.” — and the confirmation reads Payment Submitted rather than Payment Successful. The invoice shows as paid only once the transfer clears.
If something goes wrong while paying
These are rare, but they are the messages your office will get asked about, so they are worth knowing. In all four cases the client is being told to talk to you rather than try again — the point of every one of them is to stop a second charge.
| What the client sees | What it means |
|---|---|
| “Your card was charged, but we could not finish recording the payment. Please contact us before paying this invoice again.” | The money was taken. PSS could not write the payment record, so the invoice may still look unpaid. Do not ask them to pay again — find the charge and reconcile it. |
| “A payment on this invoice is still being confirmed with us, so it cannot be paid online right now. Please contact us before paying it again.” | An earlier payment on this invoice is in the same state and has not been reconciled yet, so the invoice is held against further online payment until someone in your office clears it. |
| “We could not check the payment status of this invoice just now, so it cannot be paid online. Please try again in a few minutes, or contact us.” | PSS could not confirm whether the above applies, and refuses rather than risk a double charge. Usually clears on its own within a few minutes. |
| “Auto Pay could not be enabled — please set it up on the Payment Methods page.” | The payment itself went through. Only the Auto Pay opt-in failed, because the card was not saved as a reusable method. They can enrol from the Payment Methods page (29.7). |
Note: The middle two messages are deliberately worded without naming a payment method, because the same hold applies to bank payments as well as cards. The first one is only ever shown for a card charge PSS has just made.
Paying several invoices at once
Ticking two or more invoices in the list turns on Bulk Payment (n).
The Multi-payment dialog lists each invoice with its balance and a combined Total, and notes that each invoice will have an individual transaction — the client pays once, but you get a payment recorded against each invoice, so nothing has to be split by hand afterwards.
Everything else works as it does for a single invoice: an editable Payment Amount, the Card / US Bank Account choice, the saved-method picker, the auto-pay opt-in and Request Notes.
Note: Paying by US Bank Account needs a bank account that is already saved and verified on the Payment Methods page. Until then the tab shows No verified bank account and the payment button stays disabled — a card is the only way to pay on the spot.